Media bias

This is the main article on Media bias. For specific information on liberal and conservative bias in the United States, please see Media bias in the United States.

Media bias is a term used to describe a real or perceived bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media, in the selection of which events will be reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" usually refers to a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or article. The direction and degree of media bias in various countries is widely disputed, although its causes are both practical and theoretical.

Practical limitations to media neutrality include the inability of journalists to report all available stories and facts, and the requirement that selected facts be linked into a coherent narrative. (Newton 1989) Since it is impossible to report everything, some bias is inevitable. Government influence, including overt and covert censorship, biases the media in some countries. Market forces that can result in a biased presentation include the ownership of the news source, the selection of staff, the preferences of an intended audience, or pressure from advertisers. Political affiliations arise from ideological positions of media owners and journalists. The space or air time available for reports, as well as deadlines needed to be met, can lead to incomplete and apparently biased stories.

Types of Bias

• Ethnic or racial bias, including racism, nationalism and regionalism.

• Corporate bias, including advertising, coverage of political campaigns in such a way as to favor corporate interests, and the reporting of issues to favor the interests of the owners of the news media.

• Class bias, including bias favoring one social class and bias ignoring social or class divisions.

• Political bias, including bias in favor of or against a particular political party or candidate.

• Religious bias, including bias in which one religious viewpoint is given preference over others.

• Sensationalism, which is bias in favor of the exceptional over the ordinary. This includes the practice whereby exceptional news may be overemphasized, distorted or fabricated to boost commercial ratings.
  

• Ideological bias based on personal philosophy which may include liberalism, conservativism, progressivism, communism, etc.

• Peer culture bias, which is bias based on popular opinions of one's peer group which may include environmentalism, anti-globalism, etc.

Studies and theories of media bias

Media bias is studied at schools of journalism, university departments (including Media studies, Cultural studies and Peace studies) and by many independent watchdog groups from various parts of the political spectrum. In the United States, many of these studies focus on issues of a conservative/liberal balance in the media. Other focuses include international differences in reporting, as well as bias in reporting of particular issues such as economic class or environmental interests.

The Glasgow Media Group carried out the Bad News Studies, a series of detailed analyses of television broadcasts (and later newspaper coverage) in the United Kingdom. (Eldridge, 2000). Published between 1976 and 1985, the Bad News Studies used content analysis, interviews and covert participant observation to conclude that news was biased against trade unions, blaming them for breaking wage negotiating guidelines and causing high inflation.

Martin Harrison's TV News: Whose Bias? (1985) criticised the methodology of the Glasgow Media Group, arguing that the GMG identified bias selectively, via their own preconceptions about what phrases qualify as biased descriptions. For example, the GMG sees the word "idle" to describe striking workers as pejorative, despite the word being used by strikers themselves. (Street 2001, p. 31).

Herman and Chomsky (1988) proposed a propaganda model hypothesizing systematic biases of U.S. media from structural economic causes. They hypothesize media ownership by corporations, funding from advertising, the use of official sources, efforts to discredit independent media ("flak"), and anti-communist ideology as the filters that bias news in favour of U.S. corporate interests.

Efforts to correct bias

One technique used to avoid bias is the "point/counterpoint" or "round table," an adversarial format in which representatives of opposing views comment on an issue. This approach theoretically allows diverse views to appear in the media. However, the person organizing the report still has the responsiblity to choose people who really represent the breadth of opinion, to ask them non-prejudicial questions, and to edit or arbitrate their comments fairly. When done carelessly, a point/counterpoint can be as unfair as a simple biased report, by suggesting that the "losing" side lost on its merits.

The Skeptics Society has accused reporters of misusing the point/counterpoint format by giving more time to superstitions than to their scientific rebuttals.

Using this format can also lead to accusations that the reporter has created a misleading appearance that viewpoints have equal validity (sometimes called "false balance"[1]). This may happen when a taboo exists around one of the viewpoints, or when one of the representatives habitually makes claims that are easily shown to be inaccurate.

One such allegation of misleading balance came from Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News. He stated in an internal e-mail message that reporters should not "artificially hold [George W. Bush and John Kerry] 'equally' accountable" to the public interest, and that complaints from Bush supporters were an attempt to "get away with ... renewed efforts to win the election by destroying Senator Kerry." When the Drudge Report published this message[2], many Bush supporters viewed it as "smoking gun" evidence that Halperin was using ABC to propagandize against Bush to Kerry's benefit, by interfering with reporters' attempts to avoid bias.

Another technique used to avoid bias, is disclosure of affiliations that may be considered a possible conflict of interest. This is especially apparent when a news organization is reporting a story with some relevancy to the news organzation itself or to its ownship individuals or conglomerate. Often times this disclosure is mandated by the laws or regulations pertaining to stocks and securities. Commentators on news stories involving stocks are often required to disclose any ownership interest in those corporations or in its competitors.

In rare cases, a news organization may dismiss or reassign staff members who appear biased. This approach was used in the Killian documents affair and after Peter Arnett's interview with the Iraqi press.

History of bias in the mass media

Political bias has been a feature of the mass media since its birth with the invention of the printing press. The expense of early printing equipment restricted media production to a limited number of people. Historians have found that publishers often served the interests of large or powerful social groups.

John Milton's pamphlet Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, published in 1644, was one of the first publications advocating freedom of the press.

In the nineteenth century, journalists began to recognize the concept of unbiased reporting as an integral part of journalistic ethics. This coincided with the rise of journalism as a powerful social force. Even today, though, the most conscientiously obejctive journalists cannot avoid accusations of bias.

Like newspapers, the broadcast media (radio and television) have been used as a mechanism for propaganda from their earliest days, a tendency made more pronounced by the initial ownership of broadcast spectrum by national governments. Although a process of media deregulation has placed the majority of the western broadcast media in private hands, there still exists a strong government presence, or even monopoly, in the broadcast media of many countries across the globe. At the same time, the concentration of media in private hands, and frequently amongst a comparatively small number of individuals, has also lead to accusations of media bias.

There are many examples of accusations of bias being used as a political tool, sometimes resulting in government censorship.

In the United States, in 1798, congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which prohibited newspapers from publishing “false, scandalous, or malicious writing” against the government, including any public opposition to any law or presidential act. This act was in effect until 1801.

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln accused newspapers in the border states of bias in favor of the Southern cause, and ordered many newspapers closed.

Chancellor Adolph Hitler of Germany, in the years leading up to World War II, accused newspapers of Marxist bias, an accusation echoed by pro-German media in England and the United States.

Politicians who favored the United States entering World War II on the German side asserted that the international media were controlled by Jews, and that reports of German mistreatment of Jews were biased and without foundation. Hollywood was said to be a hotbed of Jewish bias, and films such as Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator were offered as proof.

In the 1980s, the government of South Africa accused newspapers of liberal bias and instituted government censorship. In 1989, the newspaper New Nation was closed by the government for three months for publishing anti-apartheid propaganda. Other newspapers were not closed, but were extensively censored. Some published the censored sections blacked out, to demonstrate the extent of government censorship.

In America during the Civil Rights movement, Southern politicians often accused the media of being biased against Southern Whites. Film and television media were accused of bias in favor of mixing of the races, and many television programs with racially mixed casts, such as I Spy and Star Trek, were not aired on Southern stations.

During the war between the United States and North Vietnam, Vice President Spiro Agnew accused newspapers of anti-American bias, and in a famous speech delivered in San Diego in 1970, called anti-war protesters “The nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Not all accusations of bias are political. Science writer Martin Gardner has accused the entertainment media of anti-science bias. He claimed that television programs such as The X-Files promote superstition. Carl Sagan made a similar claim about The Flintstones.

Role of language in media bias

Mass media, despite its ability to project worldwide, is limited in its cross-ethnic compatibility by one simple attribute -- language. Ethnicity, being largely developed by a divergence in geography, language, culture, genes and similarly, point of view, has the potential to be countered by a common source of information. Therefore, language, in the absence of translation, comprises a barrier to a worldwide community of debate and opinion, although it is also true that media within any given society may be split along class, political or regional lines.

Language may also be seen as a political factor in mass media, particularly in instances where a society is characterized by a large number of languages spoken by its populace. The choice of language of mass media may represent a bias towards the group most likely to speak that language, and can limit the public participation by those who do not speak the language. On the other hand, there have also been attempts to use a common-language mass media to reach out to a large, geographically dispersed population, such as in the use of Arabic language by news channel Al Jazeera.

Many media theorists concerned with language and media bias point towards the media of the United States, a large country where English is spoken by the vast majority of the population. Some theorists argue that the common language is not homogenizing; and that there still remain strong differences expressed within the mass media. This viewpoint asserts that moderate views are bolstered by drawing influences from the extremes of the political spectrum. In the United States, the national news therefore contributes to a sense of cohesion within the society, proceeding from a similarly informed population. According to this model, most views within society are freely expressed, and the mass media is accountable to the people and tends to reflect the spectrum of opinion.

Language may also be a more subtle form of bias. Use of a word with positive or negative connotations rather than a more neutral synonym can form in the audience's mind a biased picture. An extreme example would be idea using the phrase "freedom fighters" instead of "insurgents." The former phrase creates an image of a noble struggle, while the latter conveys the idea of violent terrorists. A more value neutral term might be "soldiers", but even that word carries its own connotations.

National and ethnic viewpoint

Many news organizations reflect or are perceived to reflect in some way the viewpoint of the geographic, ethnic, and national population that they primarily serve. Media within countries is sometimes seen as being sycophantic or unquestioning about the country's government.

Western media is often criticized in the rest of the world (including eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East) as being pro-Western with regard to a variety of political, cultural and economic issues. Al-Jazeera has been frequently criticized in the West about its coverage of Arab world issues.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and wider Arab-Israeli issues are a particularly controversial area, and nearly all coverage of any kind generates accusation of bias from one or both sides.

Media Bias and Religion

Media bias towards religion is most obvious in countries where the media is controlled by the state, which is in turn dominated by a particular religion. In these instances, bias against other faiths can be explicit and virulent.

But even in countries with freedom of religion and a free press, the dominant religion exerts some amount of influence on the media. In nations where Christianity is the majority faith, reporters tend to focus on the activites of the Christian community, to the exclusion of other faiths. But the opposite may also occur, with media self-consciously avoiding reporting on any religious matters at all in order to avoid the appearence of favoring one faith over another.

This type of bias is often seen with reporting on new religious movements. It is often the case that the only view the public gets of a new religious movement, controversial group or purported cult is a negative and sensationalized report by the media. For example, most new or minority relgious movements only recieve media coverage when something sensational occurs, e.g. the mass suicide of a cult or illegal activities of a leader in the religious movement.

According to the Encyclopedia of Social Work (19th edition), the news media play an influential role in the general public's perception of cults. As reported in several studies, the media have depicted cults as problematic, controversial, and threatening from the beginning, tending to favor sensationalistic stories over balanced public debates (Beckford, 1985; Richardson, Best, & Bromley, 1991; Victor, 1993). It furthers the analysis that media reports on cults rely heavily on police officials and cult "experts" who portray cult activity as dangerous and destructive, and when divergent views are presented, they are often overshadowed by horrific stories of ritualistic torture, sexual abuse, mind control, etc. Furthermore, unfounded allegations, when proved untrue, receive little or no media attention.^[3]

Other influences

The apparent bias of media is not always specifically political in nature. The news media tend to appeal to a specific audience, which means that stories that affect a large number of people on a global scale often receive less coverage in some markets than local stories, such as a public school shootings, a celebrity wedding, a plane crash, or similarly glamorous or shocking stories. For example, the deaths of millions of people in an ethnic conflict in Africa might be afforded scant mention in American media, while the shooting of five people in a high school is analyzed in depth. The reason for this type of bias is a function of what the public wants to watch and/or what producers and publishers believe the public wants to watch.

Bias has also been claimed in instances referred to as conflict of interest, whereby the owners of media outlets have vested interests in other commercial enterprises. In such cases in the United States, the media outlet is required to disclose the conflict of interest.

See also

• Media bias in the United States
• Yellow journalism
• Objectivity (journalism)
• Hostile media effect
• Propaganda Model
• Cultural bias
• Liberal bias
• Culture of fear
• Mass Media Coverage of Missing Pretty Girls
• Metanarrative
• Hostile media effect
• Group attribution error
• Media Transparency

Bibliography

• What Liberal Media? by reporter Eric Alterman

• Eldridge, J. (2000). The Contribution of the Glasgow Media Group to the Study of Television and Print Journalism. Journalism Studies, 1 (1), pp. 113-27.

• Harrison, M. (1985). TV News: Whose Bias?. London: Policy Journals.

• Herman, E. and Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon.

• Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News by former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg ISBN 0-06052-084-1

• Arrogance: Rescuing America From the Media Elite by former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg ISBN 0-44653-191-X

• Press Bias and Politics: How the Media Frame Controversial Issues by professor Jim Kuypers ISBN

• Newton, K. (1989). Media bias. In R. Goodin, and A. Reeve (eds). Liberal neutrality. London: Routledge, pp. 130-55.

References

• ^ Robins, Susan P., Encyclopedia of Social Work, 19th Edition, National Association of Social Workers. Washington, DC. 1997 Update

External links

• What's Wrong With the News? - Analysis of what is wrong with the media today.
• Content Analysis
• The Memory Hole (site for the preservation of FOIAed documents and material removed from government websites)
• The Media Awareness Project (site about drug reform)
• Honest Reporting (site about purported anti-Israeli media bias)
  • "Those Aren't Stones, They're Rocks" -Seth Ackerman Article concerning pro-Israel bias
• Blinded By Science: How ‘Balanced’ Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality by reporter Chris Mooney
• "A Measure of Media Bias" - a paper-in-progress attempting to analyze media bias by looking at sources statistically
• Media Matters - Website updated daily that provides examples of claimed Conservative bias and misinformation in the news.
• MediaLens